Night, opera. Night, restaurant.
Vicky says, “You were born on the day of the solar eclipse.”
Vicky holds his face.
His mother has been cremated.
He climbs out, stands dripping on the marble floor, the white towel wrapped halfway up his chest.
He looks at the mirror. The mirror steamed.
There could be someone in the room, in the bed.
There could be a woman.
But in the bathroom he’s alone.
He locks the door.
Gold taps. Marble.
Turns off all the lights but one, small and recessed, so the room is womblike with the heat and dark corners and the extractor fan rattling in the wall.
It’s the noise of the fan that’s important here.
He takes another towel and places it over his head.
Eases himself to his knees and crawls like a penitent into the corner.
Here he admits the smallest sliver of light.
Considers nothing but this light, which grows to the size of the universe.
He can hold himself here.
Here he’s safe,
beneath the table below the mirror,
as his mother combs her hair and sings to him.
He wishes he could stay here.
But he’s waking.
Waking.
What’s changed?
The pain has made a bed for itself.
And he’s back in the world.
A godown of sorts.
Farm machinery, bags of fertilizer, animal feed.
The floor of compacted dirt, the walls of brick.
A weak light bulb hangs from a cord.
What day is this?
He tries to lift his head. He’s on a filthy mattress.
Mosquito and flea bitten, staring up at a corrugated metal roof.
His wrists bound together with rope. The stench of soiled bodies, his pants and shirt soaked with dried blood.
His ribs broken, certainly.
His nose too. Maybe his jaw.
* * *
—
He’s been kidnapped, this has become clear.
He can’t remember how or when or where.
There’s a great black hole where his memory has been.
He twists his neck.
An oaf of a man is sitting against the wall, his limbs like spades, his face all nose and ears. He wears a faded blue tracksuit, the cheap knockoff kind.
There’s an old shotgun by his side.
An Oaf, he thinks.
An Oaf who’s sleeping.
So Sunny tries to stand.
But his legs are weak and numb, and what’s more, his left ankle is clapped in rusty metal, chained to an old machine.
Now the Oaf is pulling the white rag that hangs around his neck up over his mouth.
Reaching for the shotgun.
He disappears out the door.
A flash of evening sky, a golden field, hot wind.
An old man, body bent like a question mark, leading a herd of buffalo.
Think. Think.
* * *
—
It’s hard to think beyond the immediacy of the pain, but he tries to string his mind together, to make a thread of things.
Where was he?
Where has he been?
What day is it? What month?
He latches on to Dinesh Singh.
Dinesh Singh and the farmers and his Megacity. All this bullshit, these Shunya things. Dinesh making his stand while he was in his office, watching it unfold on the TV.
Drinking vodka from the bottle in his bottom drawer, blinds drawn, a cliché.
From there he reaches across the chasm.
* * *
—
Eli.
He was driving with Eli in his beat-up old SUV.
Heading to meet with Dinesh Singh.
That motherfucker better have something good to say.
* * *
—
Minutes pass. Or has it been hours? The godown door opens. In comes the Oaf again. There’s another man behind him. He recognizes him as if from a dream. Yes, it’s the Incubus, swaggering, fishing out a Nokia phone.
“About time, Sunny Wadia,” the Incubus says. “No time to waste. Give us the number.”
“What number?”
“The one that will make this all go away.”
* * *
—
Two rings, three rings.
A click on the other end.
The Incubus speaks.
“Good evening, sir. I have someone for you.”
He thrusts the phone to Sunny’s ear.
“Papa . . . I . . . ,” Sunny fumbles the words.
The Incubus snatches the phone from him.
“Hear that?” he says. “Your boy is alive. But for how long, that depends on you. I’ll call again in one hour with our demands.”
He hangs up, removes the battery and the SIM, looks to the Oaf.
“I’ll be gone for a while. Keep an eye on him. Give him food.”
With that, the Incubus stalks away.
* * *
—
He’s left alone with the Oaf.
But he isn’t really there.
He’s slipping down the cliff face of consciousness once more, toward the roiling sea.
Vicky was the one to tell him about the date of his birth.
The auspicious date. February 16, 1980.
The day of a great solar eclipse.
He was there. He saw it with his own eyes.
Vicky was the one who told him of the demon women who rode naked from the sky, fangs bared, when the blood sacrifice was made, who conferred power on those who had conjured them, or else tore them limb from limb. The boy sat on the hard mountain of his thigh, lost in his words while the long black strands of hair spilled over like night water falling.
“One day,” Vicky whispered in his ear, “you’ll be stronger than them all.”
But he is shriveled.
Shriveled.
Everything is dry and tight and hard.
A barren rock face where water once flowed.
There’s a gap he cannot bridge.
A distance he has crossed and cannot return.
He has sacrificed everything.
Love, adoration, respect, loyalty, companionship.
He has nothing left save his ruthlessness.
A fleeting ruthlessness he cannot own.
He’s back there on that road. That forever road.
Ajay is helping him, carrying the limp body of Gautam Rathore.
Ajay has not yet handed over his gun.
Sunny has not yet punched Neda in the face. The forever face.
Why was she there?
Why do anything?
Time goes both ways.
He’s there on the road.
She’s crying in the road.
He’s angry with her.
He thinks she’s performing grief.
He’ll never leave.
* * *
—
The Oaf returns sometime later carrying a metal tray. A jug of lassi, a clay cup, three parathas.
The Oaf pours the lassi into the clay cup. “Drink.” His voice is grudging, halting, maybe even scared.
“What happened to the guy I was with?” Sunny says.
No response.
“Who are you?” he tries again.
No response. Just those sad, lonely, pinprick eyes.
“You’re not a monster,” Sunny says.
A flash in those eyes. “Shut up.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Sunny goes on, for want of anything real to say.
“Shut up!”
“You’ve proved you’re a big man. Now we can talk. We can use a man like you. A man like you can get rich.”
The Oaf lumbers to his feet, scrambles to the door.
“Hey!” Sunny calls.
The Oaf halts, freezes, half turns.
“Where’s your boss?”
The Oaf bristles. “He’s not my boss.”
“He’ll get you killed.”
“He’s not my boss.”
“Who is he?”